Backed by Qatar's billions, Sarkozy's brokerage and Beckham's glamour, Paris St Germain are forging the new French Revolution

The area where the players congregate for interviews tells its own story about the rapid rise of Paris St Germain.

Nicolas Sarkozy, the former President of France and the broker responsible for the renaissance of the club, briskly waltzes down the red carpet first.

Next comes Nasser al-Khelaifi, the 39-year-old former professional tennis player who reached the dizzy heights of No 995 in the world and is now the club's president and the representative of the Qatari royal family, which took over the club in July 2011 intent on transforming them into rivals to Manchester United and Real Madrid.

And finally there is David Beckham, for once only the third-most important man in the vicinity, exchanging a smile and a wink with Al-Khelaifi.

Beckham has been here only two months and Friday night was just his sixth appearance, five coming from the bench. But, whatever sceptics may think, he made a significant contribution to a 1-0 win over Montpellier, a victory that propels PSG closer to their first French title in 19 years. Beckham came on for the final 17 minutes of the game and it was no coincidence that that was the best period of the match for PSG.

He still lives for the limelight: his first touch of the game, a ball for Zlatan Ibrahimovic, was sublime. And he was indirectly involved in the goal by Kevin Gameiro, Beckham's lofted pass for Ibrahimovic presenting Jeremy Menez with the opportunity to open up Montpellier's defence.

Presence on the pitch: David Beckham has played well since joining Paris St Germain

But on Tuesday night comes the biggest match since the Qatari takeover of the club: a Champions League quarter-final against Barcelona.

With Manchester United, Arsenal, Chelsea and Manchester City all eliminated, Beckham remains the last Englishman standing in Europe's biggest competition.

His team may not look a match for Barca just yet and the Champions League trophy may have to wait for now. But you suspect that will not be the case for long.

'Paris St Germain will be a team like Manchester United, a top team in Europe,' said manager Carlo Ancelotti. 'I don't know how long it will be, but it will be, for sure.'

Beckham concurs that the league title will come and that the club are on the way to challenging for the Champions League.

'That is where every big club want to go,' he said. 'We definitely have the players, we definitely have the mentality and right now we're doing it.'

On a cold Friday night in the Parc des Princes, and after a scrappy win over Montpellier, it is not immediately obvious that PSG are the global superpower in waiting.

The trappings are there; fireworks as the team come out, a near-capacity crowd of 44,000 in an atmospheric stadium and Beckham, albeit in a cameo role. There is also passionate support, which has been too fervent at times, the club's hooligan problem having been only recently resolved.

And the club's location, a few Metro stops from the Eiffel Tower and the Louvre, makes Chelsea look distinctly down-market. That said, the club were formed only in 1970, which hardly puts PSG among the founding fathers of European football.

They have won just two French league titles, the last in 1994, and last year they lost out to country cousins Montpellier, a team constructed on around a quarter of the budget of PSG. But the key to the inevitability of their success is that they are the chosen vehicle for some serious geo-political manoeuvres.

The tale of the takeover of Paris St Germain by Qatar Sports Investments, a subsidiary of the Qatari Al-Thani royal family's investment vehicle, the Qatar Investment Authority, is well recorded: a meeting with then President Sarkozy and Qatar's Crown Prince, Tamin bin Hamad al-Thani took place at the Elysée Palace on November 23, 2010. Also in attendance was UEFA president Michel Platini.

A month later Qatar, the state with the highest GDP per head of population in the world thanks to its gas reserves, shocked the world to win the right to host the 2022 World Cup finals, helped by Platini's vote.

Settling in: David Beckham celebrates with team mates against Montpellier

'I voted completely independently for a region that has never before hosted the World Cup and not because Sarkozy asked me to,' insists Platini.

Shortly afterwards, Platini's lawyer son, Laurent, started work for Qatar Sports Investments. And in July 2011, the takeover of PSG by Qatar Sports Investment was completed.

'I don't think there's any doubt that the acquisition of PSG was part of a larger deal, in which the French, including Platini, supported the World Cup bid,' said James Dorsey, Senior Fellow at Singapore's Nanyang Technical University and an expert on football in the Middle East.

Brand ambassador: David Beckham offers more than just football

But he and other experts insist that Qatar's investment in PSG is neither a superficial ego-driven project nor a favour in return for a World Cup vote but part of a diverse strategy to curry favour with western powers, especially those with a record for military intervention in the Middle East. In the UK, Qatar's investment arm owns Harrods, the Shard, Canary Wharf, the Olympic Village and the London Stock Exchange, and helped Barclays bank avoid a Government bail-out.

Barcelona, PSG's opponents on Tuesday, are themselves beneficiaries of Qatari patronage, Qatar Airways being the first-ever commercial sponsor of the Barca shirt for £25million a year.

In France, Qatar has invested in several leading companies - recent research suggests as much as £9billion - and sponsor charity projects in impoverished Parisian suburbs.

'France is considered very much like Britain and the United States as a useful protector of Gulf monarchies at the moment,' said Dr Chris Davidson, a lecturer in Middle East politics at Durham University. 'They haven't gone as far as building a Shard or buying a Harrods, but you could say Paris St Germain are one of the biggest international brands France has. Most young Arabs know PSG.'

The French connection: Michel Platini backed Qatar's World Cup bid

Dorsey agrees. 'The Gulf states such as Qatar, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates use sport for all the same reasons as others do - projection, image building, leveraging of business opportunities,' he said. 'But what sets them apart is that sport is a key element of their defence and security policy. It doesn't matter how many weapons you buy, and how sophisticated they are, you're not going to be able to defend yourself.

'You want to embed yourself into the
international community, so that if and when there's trouble you may be
able to rely on the international community to bail you out. You're
building relationships on levels which you would not do in normal
diplomacy or defence and security policy. It's soft power, cultural
diplomacy and public diplomacy. But what sets Qatar apart is that sport
has been a key element in what they're trying to build as a national
identity.'

Critics
point to a lack of basic rights for the small army of migrant workers
currently transforming Qatar from a desert into an urban environment and
to the case of Muhammad al-Ajami, a Qatari poet jailed for 15 years for
writing a poem in praise of the Arab Spring and critical of Qatar's
rulers.

'That stunned many of the ex-pats in Qatar who had bought into this myth that Qatar was somehow non-political and didn't have problems with its own people,' said Dr Davidson.

Yet Qatar has also created Al
Jazeera, the rolling news channel for the Arab world, which is viewed as
a public relations coup, as it suggests a more liberal approach to the
world from a country that is predominantly influenced by a conservative
branch of Islam.

And
Al Jazeera's subsidiary, beIN Sport, now owns the TV rights to the
French league. In PSG's case, the attempt to buy goodwill has seen £200m
spent on transfers, bringing in Ibrahimovic, Thiago Silva and Lucas
Moura among others.

There
is one small problem, however. Although he may have been present at the
talks that gave birth to the deal between the Qataris and PSG,
Platini's proposed Financial Fair Play restrictions on Champions League
clubs will inhibit PSG's progress.

UEFA
rules mean that any club losing more than £38m in the two years from
2012-14 face sanctions and ultimately exclusion from the Champions
League.

Some experts thought PSG's cumulative
losses in that period would be around £140m. That was before the club
signed a £120m-a-year partnership with the Qatar Tourist Board.Losses
for last year were recently reported at just £4.6m.

UEFA are monitoring the legality of such deals, as Alasdair Bell, their director of legal affairs, explained: 'We have to determine whether a sponsorship deal is genuine or a disguised capital injection.'

English clubs such as Chelsea, who have spent the last four years assiduously preparing for Financial Fair Play by cutting costs, will be keeping a close eye on that process, as will Arsenal and Liverpool, both hopeful that Financial Fair Play will put the brakes on benefactor owners and allow traditional elite clubs to thrive.

In reality, it matters little. UEFA's rules may slow down the rate of progress, the ultimate goals may take a little longer to achieve but few who know Qatar well doubt the final outcome.

Whatever Barcelona do to expose their limitations over the next fortnight, Paris St Germain are on the verge of being a global football force and the English will have to get used to taking a French club seriously.